The teaching behind The Deep. Scripture is quoted from the King James Version (KJV).
Genesis 1:1–5
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Before the light
Before there was a sunrise, before a single star burned, before there was anyone around to see it, there was God.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." From the very first sentence, the Bible is telling us whose story this is.
Now look at verse 2. "Without form, and void." No shape, nothing living, nothing to see. Just deep, dark water. Formless. Empty. And over all of it, darkness.
But don't miss who's there in the dark. "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Before anything had been put in order, before there was a single ray of light, God was already there, moving over that dark water.
And then He spoke.
1. When God speaks, it happens
"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."
In Hebrew, it's four words: yehi or, vayehi or. "Let there be light. And there was light." Read it out loud and you can hear it. The command and the result are almost the same words, standing side by side. No gap. No struggle. No second attempt. God says it, and it is.
Let that sink in, because the rest of the Bible is built on it. Every time Genesis 1 says "And God said," what He said comes to pass. And then the story keeps going: promises to Noah, to Abraham, to Jacob, to Joseph, and every one of them kept, all the way to Jesus. Paul says it with joy: "For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen" (2 Corinthians 1:20).
That's the God we serve. He has never spoken an empty word. When He makes a promise, you can stand on it, because the first page of your Bible proves what His word does.
2. Our God is the light
Here's something you can read right past: the sun isn't made until the fourth day (Genesis 1:14–19). On day one there is light. Real light. And not a sun, moon, or star in the sky to give it.
When the sun and moon finally show up, Genesis doesn't even call them by name. It calls them "lights," lamps hung in the sky. The sun carries light; it didn't invent it. The light was there first, and it came from God.
And there's a warning in that for every one of us. Isn't it easy to start trusting the things God uses more than the God who uses them? Genesis won't let us. The light belonged to Him before there was ever a sun to hold it.
And Scripture never stops saying it. "The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?" (Psalm 27:1). "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). Jesus stood up and declared, "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John 8:12). And on the last pages of the Bible, in the new creation: "they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light" (Revelation 22:5).
The Bible opens with light that doesn't need the sun, and it closes the same way. God doesn't just give light. He is the light.
3. He still shines into the dark
When Charles Spurgeon preached on this passage in 1865, he looked at Genesis 1:2 and saw more than the early earth. He saw us: "Such is the state of every human heart till God the Holy Spirit visits it."
Paul saw it too. When he wants to describe what happens when someone comes to know Christ, he reaches all the way back to the first morning of the world:
"For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." (2 Corinthians 4:6)
The God who commanded light to shine out of darkness is the God who has shined in our hearts. Same God. Same light. What He did over the deep on day one, He does in every heart He brings to Himself.
Maybe parts of your life feel like Genesis 1:2 right now. Unformed. Empty. Dark. Then remember what was true even there. The Spirit of God was already moving over the deep. And when He spoke, the darkness had to give way.
"Let there be light." He's still saying it.
Keep reading
- Genesis 1:1–2:3
- Psalm 33:6–9 and Hebrews 11:3
- John 1:1–14
- 2 Corinthians 4:1–6
- Revelation 21:23–22:5
- Charles Spurgeon, "Light—Natural and Spiritual," Sermon 660 (1865), at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library